Last Modified: Tuesday, September 17, 2013 at 12:06 p.m.

Jane Forrester, the county's newest social worker, tries to help Ivy's family and grows emotionally attached. As she works, however, she discovers dark secrets – and runs into increasing hostility from her superiors.

That's the set-up for “Necessary Lies,” the latest novel from sometime Topsail Island resident Diane Chamberlain (St. Martin's, $26.99). Herself a former medical social worker, Chamberlain dramatizes the story of North Carolina's long-running forced sterilization campaign, aimed at “mental defectives” and the “feeble-minded.” She does so with quiet understatement, which only underlines the injustices involved.

At the same time, though, “Necessary Lies” remains a story about very human characters who touch the heart.

'The Wayward Girls of Samarcand'

In 1931, teenaged inmates set fire to two dormitories at Samarcand Manor, North Carolina's home for wayward girls. Budget cuts forced by the Great Depression had made conditions intolerable at the school, worsened by the sadism of some of the staff. That was no excuse, though, in the eyes of the law – and in 1931 arson was a capital crime in North Carolina. All 16 suspects, some as young as 13, faced the death penalty.

What follows is a yarn stranger than fiction as a real-life crusading journalist, Nell Battle Lewis of Raleigh, set out to save the girls. “Battlin' Nell” had just become one of the first women in North Carolina to earn a law degree – at a time when women in the state were still not allowed to serve on juries – and defending the 16 would be her first and last case.

<p class="bold allcaps">'Necessary Lies'</p>
<p>It's 1960 in rural Eastern North Carolina. Fifteen-year-old Ivy Hart lives in a tenant shack, tending her ailing grandmother, her mentally ill older sister and young nephew.</p><p>Jane Forrester, the county's newest social worker, tries to help Ivy's family and grows emotionally attached. As she works, however, she discovers dark secrets – and runs into increasing hostility from her superiors.</p><p>That's the set-up for “Necessary Lies,” the latest novel from sometime Topsail Island resident Diane Chamberlain (St. Martin's, $26.99). Herself a former medical social worker, Chamberlain dramatizes the story of North Carolina's long-running forced sterilization campaign, aimed at “mental defectives” and the “feeble-minded.” She does so with quiet understatement, which only underlines the injustices involved.</p><p>At the same time, though, “Necessary Lies” remains a story about very human characters who touch the heart.</p><h3>'The Wayward Girls of Samarcand'</h3>
<p>In 1931, teenaged inmates set fire to two dormitories at Samarcand Manor, North Carolina's home for wayward girls. Budget cuts forced by the Great Depression had made conditions intolerable at the school, worsened by the sadism of some of the staff. That was no excuse, though, in the eyes of the law – and in 1931 arson was a capital crime in North Carolina. All 16 suspects, some as young as 13, faced the death penalty.</p><p>Author Anne Russell and historian Melton McLaurin (“The Marines of Montford Point”), dramatize the case in their novel, “The Wayward Girls of Samarcand” (Bradley Creek Press, $15 paperback). </p><p>What follows is a yarn stranger than fiction as a real-life crusading journalist, Nell Battle Lewis of Raleigh, set out to save the girls. “Battlin' Nell” had just become one of the first women in North Carolina to earn a law degree – at a time when women in the state were still not allowed to serve on juries – and defending the 16 would be her first and last case.</p>